Republicans Summoning Attorney Ahead Of Fundraising Fraud Deadline

House Republicans are pushing harder into their investigation of Democrats' primary fundraising engine after an explosive report surfaced. This new data suggests left-wing campaigns might be collecting cash from abroad. Fox News Digital reports top GOP committee chairs are summoning ActBlue attorney Ronald Machen for a closed-door interview before Oct. 9.

A letter sent Monday morning claims information Machen previously gave investigators contradicts other collected data. The core issue concerns ActBlue's standards for verifying if a donor is actually a U.S. citizen.

"On September 11, 2026, you provided a briefing to the House Administration, Judiciary, and Oversight and Government Reform Committees regarding the accuracy of ActBlue CEO Regina Wallace-Jones's prior statements to Congress about ActBlue's donor and passport collection processes," the letter stated directly.

It accuses Machen's review of being nothing more than an after-the-fact sugarcoating of ActBlue's misconduct and Ms. Wallace-Jones's misrepresentations to the House Administration Committee.

The letter came from House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio. It also names Committee on House Administration Chairman Bryan Steil, R-Wis., and House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, R-Ky. These leaders head the panels probing ActBlue right now.

ActBlue serves as a massive money-raising platform for campaigns including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed, and Democratic leaders in both chambers of Congress.

Republican lawmakers have long accused the company of lax verification standards. ActBlue says it actively improved those checks since the GOP probe started. Yet a new report released earlier this month suggests employees green-lit donations despite questions about their origin. This story first broke via Fox News Digital.

The main worry for Republicans involves passport number verification. The report claims the system only required the correct character count for a U.S. passport number rather than a valid code to accept a donation.

The Monday letter also points to a 2024 contemporaneous review by ActBlue's then-outside counsel, former Biden White House Counsel Dana Remus. This review allegedly found a substantial risk that some funds raised for Democrat campaigns and causes were impermissible contributions from foreign nationals.

Remus' review further noted passport checks did not always happen. They were never conducted when donations used third-party fiscal platforms like Apple Pay or PayPal, according to the letter.

Republican chairs said Machen's prior comments conceded his forensic review found ActBlue processed and accepted donations with foreign indicators. They argued this happened even though ActBlue failed to identify a passport number or other indicia of eligibility for the donor.

"Nonetheless, you defended Ms. Wallace-Jones's representations to Congress by arguing that ActBlue's compliance and vetting policy was 'as close to 100 percent as it could be,'" the letter read.

Documents produced to the Committees undercut this assertion. These documents demonstrate that if a donor did not have a U.S. passport or a U.S.

ActBlue staff kept the power to choose an alternative way of verifying a donor's citizenship status. This meant an employee could insert a placeholder like ACTBLUEXX into the passport number field on a donor account. That move allowed future contributions from that person without needing a U.S. passport number at all. The letter stated Machen's review was limited strictly to 2023, arguing it left out potentially valuable information about 2024. As such, the review did not accurately represent the totality of ActBlue's foreign donation vetting and donor outreach practices during the 2024 election cycle. In fact, documents produced to the Committees show that ActBlue relaxed its vetting practices twice in 2024, data that your narrow forensic review did not capture. The letter also charged that he disputed Remus' analysis without going into detail on how he established his own findings. ACTBLUE SCRUTINY FUELS NEW GOP BILLS TO TIGHTEN ELECTION DONATION RULES sits alongside the claim that ActBlue has consistently denied any wrongdoing and dismissed Republicans' most recent findings in a statement to Fox News Digital. There's nothing to see here, according to the group. After we released findings of a third-party forensic analysis that completely undermined a central claim they have made against ActBlue, Republicans are refusing to move on. Instead, they are orchestrating another political stunt before rushing out of town weeks early to go campaign. This coordinated campaign against ActBlue isn't about the facts or legislating, it's about Republicans' efforts to silence organizations they believe threaten their agenda. ACTBLUE SUES TEXAS AG KEN PAXTON, ALLEGING POLITICAL RETALIATION OVER DEMOCRATS' FUNDRAISING adds another layer of tension to this dispute. A closed-door interview summons is not the same as a subpoena, which is a legally binding order.